Workshops and meetings at the IJC’s spring semiannual gathering

The IJC’s boards were center stage the week of April 20, 2026, as the Commission hosted its spring semiannual meeting in Washington, DC.

The semiannual meetings are the IJC’s opportunity to bring members of its boards together from across the transboundary and hold “board appearances.” Here, members talk about what they are working on, what they are seeing and hearing in their watersheds, and what challenges they face. This spring, Commissioners met with members of its 14 standing boards, as well as those from its two study boards focused on water access in the St. Mary and Milk Rivers and water pollution in the Elk-Kootenai/y basin, and those involved with the expedited review of Regulation Plan 2014, which is associated with Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River water flows.

These events also serve as an opportunity to host broader workshops with IJC staff, Commissioners, and board members. This semiannual, IJC staff hosted two such workshops. The first was centered on the International Watersheds Initiative and brought board members together to brainstorm concept plans for implementing the watershed approach within each board’s responsibilities. The watershed approach aims to manage a watershed in its entirety, including considerations of ecology, land and water use, and local expertise.

Board members broke into discussion tables to come up with their list of ideas on what they’ve achieved so far and how they could fulfill outstanding gaps, before explaining their thoughts to the broader room. IJC staff have held similar workshops at recent semiannual meetings and hope to continue to move towards implementation of the watershed approach at another scheduled in Ottawa in October.

The other workshop was a strategy session with the Commission’s Great Lakes Science Advisory Board, the Great Lakes Water Quality Board, and the Health Professionals Advisory Board. Board members, staff and Commissioners discussed a variety of topics, including cross-cutting themes, to help inform and prioritize the future work of the boards.

Finally, on Wednesday evening the IJC hosted a reception at the Ben Franklin diplomatic suites at the US Department of State, where Commissioners honored two retiring longtime board members: John Kilpatrick, director of the US Geological Survey’s Wyoming-Montana Science Center who has worked with the Accredited Officers of the St. Mary-Milk Rivers since 2007 and on the St. Mary and Milk Rivers Study Board since its inception in 2021, and Dr. Val Klump, who has been involved since 1997, as a member of the Council of Great Lakes Research Managers, now the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board-Research Coordination Committee.

The IJC could not fulfill its role under the Boundary Waters Treaty without the hard work of board members, and the semiannual meetings are always a good reminder of the successes the Commission has seen thanks to their tireless work on both sides of our shared border.